Herno Gin

The award winning classic dry gin from Sweden’s Herno distillery and one of the hands-down best gins the Oak Barrel team has tried for a while.

This uses eight certified-organic botanicals including Hungarian juniper berries, hand-peeled lemon, Swedish lingon berries, meadowsweet from the UK, Indian black pepper, cassia from Indonesia and vanilla from Madagascar.

This stars with a clean note of fresh juniper and pine, with an underlying savoury note and a hit of cake dough mix. The following palate is exceptional, sweet with lemon tart.

With time there’s a growing spice on the nose – a subtle cinnamon.

Originally released December 2012, this has been named Gin Grand Master at the Global Gin Masters twice in the four years it has entered.

Hernö is located in Dala, outside Härnösand in Ångermanland, Sweden, and has been distilling since 2011. When founded, it was both Sweden’s first dedicated gin distillery and the world’s northernmost gin distillery.

Their organic gins are created in small batch productions and they have a strong claim to being Europe’s most awarded gin from 2013-to-2016. They’ve become available in the Australian market, due in no small part to their championing by local powerhouse distillery Four Pillars.